


we can be each others chocolate or alcohol

by OnceAndFloral



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Eldritch Lyf, Hurt/Comfort, Nonbinary Character, Other, Sickfic, Trauma, this is incredibly self indulgent and i refuse to let any of you shame me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:56:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23587246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnceAndFloral/pseuds/OnceAndFloral
Summary: Two times Lyf and Tim get sick and take care of each other.
Relationships: Lyfrassir Edda/Gunpowder Tim
Comments: 13
Kudos: 155





	1. Chapter 1

“Kill me.”

Lyf sighs, turning the page of their book to avoid addressing Tim’s pout. “I’m not going to kill you, Marius said that dying might make whatever disease is in you worse and then you’re just going to suffer longer.”

“Marius isn’t even actually a doctor,” Tim groans.

“Okay, well, _Brian,_ who definitely is a doctor, said the same thing when I asked so chill the fuck out?”

“You're being so mean to me when I'm in such a weakened state.”

They roll their eyes. “It's not that bad, your mechanism is already making recovery time much shorter than it is for most.”

“Nope, it's terrible.” Tim swoons dramatically. “I'm dying for real this time and you'll regret saying such cruel things to me once I'm gone.”

“Tim-”

“Fuck off, I'm busy dying right now.”

The smug look is quickly wiped off of Tim’s as he starts coughing with enough force to send him onto his side. Lyf rushes forward to make sure he doesn’t fall off the bed. They managed to convince Marius that his condition was decent enough to stay in his room instead of the med bay, mostly because they didn’t put it past Tim to kill Marius just to leave. Of course, now Lyf had to stay with him to keep an eye out in case it _did_ worsen to the point of needing the med bay, because they were the one least likely to get into a fight with him. Besides Brian, who was busy doing pilot things.

“It’s okay,” Lyf mumbles, running a hand up and down Tim’s arm in what is hopefully a soothing gesture. “Just get it out.”

“You sound like a mom,” Tim coughs.

“Yea, well, I’ve had some practice.”

“... What’s that supposed to mean.”

Lyf swallows hard. Oops. They shouldn’t have brought that up. Now they have to think about Yggdrasil. “I babysat for my brother a lot after his wife died. Back on New Midgard.”

“Oh.” Tim’s voice is very brittle. It’s to be expected, though, none of the Mechanisms are particularly good with feelings, and Lyf is only a few hundred years out from escaping Yggdrasil. It’s still fresh.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” Lyf assures him. “The point is that I’ve taken care of sick kids before.”

“I’m not a _kid.”_

Lyf smiles and presses their lips to Tim’s forehead. “I know. Now get some sleep.”

They half expected Tim to put up a fight over it but thankfully he fell silent. Well, as silent as he could get with the slight, wheezing rattle every time he breathed. Even though Lyf knows he couldn’t die, or at least not permanently, a heavy knot of anxiety still rests in the pit of their stomach. Lyf kept a loose grip on Tim’s hand, fingers hooked together as they tried their best to turn the pages of their book with their free hand.

The door opens and Marius’ head pops through. “How’s he doing? Does he need to go to the medical bay?”

“No, von Raum, not yet.”

Marius pouts. “Dammit.”

“Can you be a little more quiet? He’s sleeping right now.”

“I’m trying to fulfill my duties as doctor.”

“I can see that, now go do that somewhere else.” Lyf shoos him away. Marius stuck his tongue out before disappearing back into the hallway. They haven’t yet decided if it was endearing or concerning how excited he was to have the prospect of a patient. 

Tim’s slumber became restless over the next hour or so. Lyf tried really, really hard to focus on the book instead of how he tossed and turned. They physically force themself not to grip Tim’s hand too tight, he really needs the rest. 

Lyf purses their lip when Tim starts muttering. It’s not that big of a deal, people just talk in their sleep sometimes. They don’t need to worry until Tim’s fidgeting until it starts escalating and suddenly he’s thrashing and Lyf is scrambling to grab his wrists so he doesn’t hurt himself. His eyes snap open at the contact, staring wildly around the room as if surrounded by phantom assailants. Tim lunges forward and throws his arms around Lyf with a choked sob.

“Bertie!”

Lyf freezes. Now that Tim is wrapped around them, they can feel the heat pouring off of him in waves. His fever had definitely progressed to a worrying degree. They feel Tim’s fingers gripping at their back, trembling and weak to the point that Lyf is sure that if they just try to pull away they would be able to, which is highly unusual for Tim, and also probably the only reason he’s not already on a murderous rampage across the ship.

“Are you okay?” Lyf asks. Tim doesn’t reply, just holds them closer and shakes. “I really need you to say something right now.”

“I’m here,” Tim says, which is better than nothing.

“Was it a fever dream?”

“... Yea. Yea, it was.”

“What do you need right now?”

Tim’s fingers flex against their back. “Talk to me?”

“Of course.” Lyf scours their brain for something that’ll put Tim at ease. They start gently rocking side to side with him in their arms. “There was this woman named Tove back on New Midgard I think you would have liked. Or at least how I met her. I took some self defense classes and my first sparring partner was this really short girl. Like, even shorter than me.”

Tim snorts. “You are short.”

“Shush, that wasn’t an invitation. Anyways, I underestimated Tove because of that, like an idiot. That, and she was super bubbly and kind and at the time I was a jaded moron who saw that as a sign of weakness. Didn’t much matter when she grabbed me by the arm and had me pinned underneath her in under two seconds.” They swallow down the bittersweet taste that rises in the back of their throat and they smile. “She was smiling then too. Probably was smiling all the way to the end.”

There’s a long silence before Tim speaks. “I know you hate us.”

This is not something Lyf can deal with, so they do their best to chuckle lightly. “Careful, you sound like you might be having emotions.”

“I’m serious.” Tim’s voice is soft in their ear. “Everyone here hates each other. And we just used you for a story and left you for dead.”

“Yes, well, that is a theme in your stories. You’re really starting to worry me here, Tim.” They should bring him to the med bay and go get Brian. “I didn’t think you cared about whether or not people like you.”

“I don’t,” Tim says a little too aggressively for it to be true. “But I don’t want you to hate me.”

Something seizes in Lyf’s chest, which is weird because their heart stopped working two weeks ago. “I don’t think we should be having a conversation like this when you’ve got a fever.”

They stand up, dragging Tim out of bed. Propping him up proved to be difficult, what with the awkward angle of Tim’s longer legs. At least Marius would be happy to have a patient to play violin music at. 

“Oo, did his condition worsen?” Marius practically squeals when they walk in.

“No need to sound so bloody excited,” Tim mutters under his breath. Lyf nudges his side. 

“His fever got really bad,” Lyf explains. 

“Wonderful!” Marius clapped his hands together as Lyf started lowering Tim to one of the cots. “I’ll go get some fluids!”

Tim groaned when he ran out of the room. “He’s going to drown me, I can tell.”

“Shush, you.”

“You have to save me from this fate worse than death, Lyf. It’s not too late for me.”

“See, now that you’re cracking jokes I don’t know what’s up with you.”

Tim grins, but it’s a little loopy, so that fever is definitely still getting to him. “Just my shining personality.”

“Right, I should be leaving before Marius comes back and stabs me so he has another infirm to take care of.”

“Hey.” Tim’s fingers snag onto Lyf’s sleeve, stopping them from leaving. “Thanks for telling me that story about your friend. It’s probably hard for you to think about Yggdrasil.”

“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Lyf lies. “What’s a little talking when you already think about it all the time?”

Oops, they hadn’t meant to say that. It doesn’t seem like it matters too much though, because Tim’s eyes are half-lidded and it doesn’t particularly look like he’s lucid enough to understand what Lyf just said. They carefully extricate his fingers from their sleeve, pressing their lips to his knuckles before setting his arm back down to the cot.


	2. Chapter 2

Lyf just… Disappears one day.

Tim has no fucking clue where they went or why they were gone. They definitely value their private time, Tim distinctly remembers the day Jonny entered their room with a _”do not disturb”_ sign on the door and came back out with a knife in his thigh, but at the same time they're not like the other Mechanisms. They don't up and disappear, they'll attend dinner or at least leave a note giving everyone a heads up on the fact that they will be barricading themself in their quarters. Lyf is more considerate than that. And they're not _dead_ , they regenerate even faster than the others, if they even get hurt at all. Except that one time. But it was only one time.

_(Lyf had been lying in the med bay for over a week. The huge gash in their stomach had been closing only bit by bit each day, and they were awake for it all. He didn't know if they refused to die or if something wouldn't let them.)_

Tim checks their room out of curiosity, nothing more. They aren't there. He checks the next day, also out of curiosity, and everything is in the exact same position he left it and there is a lack of a certain outer god-touched individual. He just can't figure it out. They didn't get thrown out the airlock, did they? It was really a safety hazard at this point. He interrogates Jonny over it (“How come when someone maybe gets tossed out an airlock I'm always the one blamed!?”) and rules it out based on his testimony. 

He's not concerned about them or anything. It's just that nothing exciting has happened on the ship for a while and Tim wants to get to the bottom of it. He wanders around the ship, ducking into the various rooms to check if they were in there. He gets a notebook thrown at his head by Ivy when he checks in the library. Apparently he’s one of the people on the blacklist for it.

Tim enters the engine room and is hit with a wave of heat. It’s the hottest place in the ship, no one went there unless it was their turn to check for damage, but Tim was being thorough. He’d checked everywhere else except for individual crew member’s rooms, and he wanted to reserve learning what fucked up shit Marius had in his room for emergencies. He weaves through the equipment, looking through the pipes and wires for just a hint of rainbow glimmers. He’s just about to leave when he hears a shaky breath down one of the darker gaps.

There’s just enough space for Tim to fit through without squaring his shoulders. Being able to see in the dark came in real handy, because at the end he finds Lyf wedged between the wall and a piece of machinery, hugging their knees. Their head lolls to the sided, forehead pressed to the metal. They look… Empty.

“Lyf?” Tim calls.

They blink like they have just noticed him there or are a computer turning back on. A grin spreads across their face. There's something wrong with it, but Tim can't quite place it.

“Tim!” Lyf coos, an edge of delirium to it. They try to sit up, fail, and slouch back against the machine.

“Have… Have you been down here for three days?”

“Mmmaybe.” They snort as if they just said something funny. “Time is weird.”

So they’re definitely sick right now. Tim inches closer. “Why did you come here?”

Their grin quickly drops. “I'm so cold.”

“Well, of course you're cold, you probably have a fever! You can't just lean against this, the heat’ll make it-” he stops as he touches the back of their hand. It's not feverish at all. In fact, it's cold like a corpse. It’s in that moment Tim wonders what kind of illness affects a person whose vital organs periodically shut down and the rest of them carries on like nothing has changed. “... How about we get you back to your room?”

And just like that the dopey smile is back on their face. “Okay!”

Tim takes their cold wrists in his hands and carefully leads them out of the little corridor. As soon as they don’t have a wall to lean against, they stumble and land against Tim’s chest. It’s okay, Lyf is short enough that it’s easy to scoop them up and leave the engine room. 

Lyf seems to grow colder as he walks back to the higher decks of the ship, like the warmth they absorbed from the machinery is being leached from their body and into the air. He takes the time to wonder if it’s worth talking to Marius or Brian about, and decides against it. He’ll talk to them if the _really_ weird eldritch shit happened. 

“Why didn’t you tell anyone where you were going?” Tim asks as he sets Lyf down in their bed.

“I didn’t think to. I just didn’t want to be cold anymore.” 

“Is there anything else bothering you?”

“‘m kinda dizzy.”

“Alright.” Tim grimaces. Lyf is shivering, even under blankets. “Are you okay?”

“No,” they respond, and it almost throws Tim for a loop. People on the Aurora weren’t known for voluntarily showing weakness.

Tim brushed away the hair that was stuck to their forehead from the cold sweat they’d gone into. “Okay, is there anything I can do?”

Lyf gives him a confused puppy kind of look. “What?”

“I sort of owe you for that one time I got sick so.” He shrugs. “I can get you soup or something? Marius, if you really want to risk it.”

“... hold me?”

Ah, shit. Um. Okay. Tim can’t exactly back down after he’d offered. He strips off his coat, places it to the side, lifts the blankets and slides under with Lyf. It takes them less than a second to curl into Tim’s side like a cat and bury their face into his hair. Tim does his best to stay relaxed at least to the point that he’s not a fucking wooden board. 

“You’re so warm,” Lyf sighs.

“Thanks, I think.” 

“I don’t regret telling you that story, you know?”

The quick change of the topic nearly gives Tim whiplash. “Huh?”

“That story about my friend from New Midgard? I know you think I hate you guys whenever I have to talk about Yggdrasil but it’s not that big of a deal.” Their breath ghosts over Tim’s skin. “I like to think about them even when it hurts. Do you have something like that?”

“I suppose, but I don't talk about it. Jonny is quick to make fun of me.” Tim snorts. “‘Quite frankly hilarious’ or whatever the fuck he says.”

“Oh yea, Bertie. You mentioned him after your fever dream. I'm sorry Jonny is so inconsiderate.”

“It's nothing new, everyone here is.”

Lyf lets out a short chuckle. “What's really funny is what happened to Yggdrasil. I mean, rainbows? It's like we were attacked by a circus.” Their body shakes with quiet laughter. “Or a ten year olds drawing. It's just so… So _hilarious_ that eighty years of rebuilding was all for nothing.”

Tim feels something wet against his neck and he jerks away. Lyf feebly chases after the escaping warmth, but they don't have the energy and he sees the tears that are freely pouring down their face. They're still laughing, but it's punctuated by little sobs and whimpers.

“I've been alive longer than New Midgard ever got to be free,” Lyf hiccups. “And what's really fun-funny is that there's no one left in the entire universe who cares about me.”

“Lyf…” Tim doesn't know what to say.

They sniff, rolling away. “I'm sorry, I'm being stupid.”

“No, no, you're not stupid,” Tim consoles, reaching over to stop them from turning away. “You don't think I'm doing this because I don't care about you, right?”

“It's payment from before. You said it yourself.” The next part is so quiet Tim barely hears it, even less than a foot away. “It's always a transaction.”

He'd fucked up that bit, then, hadn't he? Tim rests a hand against Lyf's face, swallowing when they lean hard into the touch. He tries to find the words to just say _something_ , but there's nothing.

“Thanks for letting me pretend, though,” they say softly, eyes shining with more unshed tears. 

Tim hugs them to his chest, and he wills the beating of his heart to slow. They practically melt against him, though whether it's for emotional reasons or the fact that he has the warmth Lyf’s frigid body craves he doesn't know. 

“I want to do this because I care about you,” Tim promises. “I was just avoiding my feelings earlier, like an idiot. I’m the stupid one here.”

“Don’t call yourself dumb to make me feel better.”

“Well, don’t call yourself dumb period.”

They sniff. “Sorry. I haven’t been sick in a couple decades and it’s getting to me.”

“I can tell. You’ve been really out of it.”

Lyf shifts a little bit, and they’re pressed so close together that their lips brush against his collarbone for just a moment, but it’s enough to make him shiver. The easiest way to fix this would be to just let go of them, but Tim realizes he doesn’t want to. 

“So you… care about me.”

“Um. Yes.”

They don’t say anything else, but they do loop their arms under Tim’s and grip the back of his shirt. He can’t see their face at this angle, he doesn’t know what’s going on in their head. He hopes it’s something good and not negative spiraling. 

Tim keeps a firm hold around them and hums, hoping it’s soothing. Lyf stays silent, which he decides to interpret as neutral. He falls asleep at some point, and he’s not sure if it was before or after Lyf, but they’re still slumbering and pressed up against him when he wakes up. They’re also still cold, which is a bit concerning. Eventually the hands at Tim’s back gather up fistfuls of his shirt again, a sign they’re awake. 

“Hey,” he says softly. 

“Hey.” Lyf buries their face into the crook of his neck. “Stay?”

To his own surprise, Tim doesn’t even hesitate to speak. “Of course.”


End file.
